Family (or: Biological Happenstance)

Your daughter’s arms are cigarettes, you notice,
after a long day.
Your mind has been alive one hundred and forty years;
your body only twenty-six.
And It has been twice as long since Uncle Gil, the catatonic flounder of a man,
has had a job.
You try to take him seriously but you cannot see beyond Gil’s gills.
He needs his tobacco. After all, he helped raise her
On healthy doses of smoke
and bruises.

Your mother thinks she should go to church,
Or at least be baptized in one name or another.
Gil would disagree. He has had wings all his life,
and knows a thing or two about the malice of angels.
“God is not good. We fought for years, he and I.
At the end, I nailed him back on the cross
and sent that fucker straight back to hell.”

Your job at the diner on Marlette St.
is
slow.
Since the record store burned down next door,
Everyone thinks the walls will burst into flame
between sips of coffee.
The record store now only plays the sounds of shifting ash and debris,
Which is maybe, you think, the next step for Americana:
The heartfelt soundtrack of a tract of land.

You keep trying to make the cigarettes quit your daughter
but they won’t.
Gil, always the role model,
is flying around the room, severing and collecting arms.
Having owned wings his entire life, he has a burning hatred for arms.

You retire to the crying chair you have worn down
your entire life. It has as little skin as you.
The window, open, fills the room with sky.
Nothing but happiness for you and yours.